


The Days Have Gone Down In the West

by katajainen



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aman (Tolkien), Angst, Gigolas Week, Grief/Mourning, Hair Braiding, Innuendo, Introspection, M/M, Remembrance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 10:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10511793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katajainen/pseuds/katajainen
Summary: It is said that the Blessed Realm heals all hurts of body and soul. This is true for the most part, but some days are unlike others.Some days, the memories cut to the quick.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the final day of Gigolas Week: prompt Aman/The West.
> 
> The title is from J. R. R. Tolkien's poem, _Lament for the Rohirrim_ , full text [here](http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Lament_for_the_Rohirrim).
> 
> Unbeta'd, because apparently it was too angsty. That can be construed as a warning or a recommendation.
> 
> (The awful double-entendre crept in when I wasn't looking, I swear. I take no responsibility.)

Some days in the Blessed Realm are unlike others. Some days, the gentle light of the West is less soothing, and the past feels more keen, like a dulled blade honed to cutting edge once more.

It has been a year, a century, an Age; time is a fickle thing in the West. Legolas wears his hair in mourning braids. He had learned himself how, carefully watched Gimli weaving his own at his parents’ passing. He had never said, but Legolas thinks Gimli knew. 

They are of his own hair alone, these braids, for there would be no replacing the gifted lock as it frayed, as was the custom of marriage braids.

That Legolas had kept that lock of Gimli’s hair, the first his husband ever wove into his braids, and not burned it as he should have, lest someone used it for malice, that also he is certain Gimli knew. He had had a shrewd eye, his husband, and a close mouth, when he had a mind to.

The other lock, the white one, Legolas had asked for. Gimli had laughed at first, but not denied him.

‘This will make no heirloom of your house, I should think,’ he had said as he had pressed the pale strands into Legolas’ hand. But his eyes, once sharp and now clouded with age, had belied his light tone.

‘I could not treasure it more if it were so: it’s a gift for remembrance.’ Gimli’s fingertips had been papery dry, tracing over the side of his face, wiping away the tears Legolas had not realized were falling.

‘Daft Elf,’ his husband had said fondly, ‘to think you would ever need such a memento.’

Not every day in the Blessed Realm is so peaceful as the last.

There comes a dawn, or a wolf’s hour with stars bright in the vast dark dome of the heavens, when Legolas gasps awake, the grief sharp and sudden upon him like a bout of sea-longing, only more cruel, for there had been a cure to the call of the West, but for this unseen hurt that has his body curling tight around a pain as fresh as the hour his husband breathed his last, for this  _ loss  _ that has him clinging tight to elusive tendrils of dream-stuff, there is no relief, for what he craves remains out of his reach, not for eternity, but for such a long time he can barely breathe under the weight of it.

Yet there is comfort to be found in the pain, for what Legolas fears the most is forgetting.

Or such as it is for his kindred. True, he might forget half the words to a song after centuries of not singing it, but he still holds some memories of his childhood so fresh and clear that coming to them in a waking dream is not different to living them. But there are many things he  _ has _ forgotten, or things he misremembers. Things like the colour of his mother’s eyes; it had been startling to meet her again and look into warm brown eyes where he had expected blue like his own. Something else of hers he had forgotten: the exact way she would tie a snare for birding, the final knot something Legolas had never, in all his years, got right on the first try.

Gimli had said she reminded him of his cousin, long years dead, who had been a hunter also. Mother had been first surprised, then delighted by the comparison. She had found no fault in Legolas’ choice of a husband then, nor does she now, save for the one thing she will not speak aloud, but that is writ clear in the passing sadness in her gaze whenever Legolas catches her looking. That look is a new memory Legolas has of her, one that will not fade when he has the ready reminder of her presence.

His greatest fear, the dread that yawns a bladed maw in his chest to swallow him whole, is that his memories of Gimli might pass in the way of so many others; grow vague or be lost entirely, recalled only as faded images indistinct from mortal dreaming, the truth in them forever in doubt.

That he might forget his skin, the taste of it under his tongue, the scent of it after love-making, or a day under the ever-gentle sun of the West. How his hands had first learned it, when he had given himself over to Gimli, heart, body and soul, the feel of it then, stretched smooth over his lover’s broad muscular frame, and so soft where it never saw the sun. Legolas remembers burying his face in the warm furred pillow of Gimli’s belly, to simply breathe him in. How his love had laughed then, mirth rolling forth from the very depths of him, easy and unrestrained.

Later, the same laughter, yet different, a brief muffled chuckle, but Gimli had had his mouth on Legolas then, and it had undone him, unexpectedly and so completely he had thought his heart might burst from it.

Legolas’ breath catches in a sob when the memory strikes at a place within him that has gone hollow. By some grace and final kindness of his maker, any yearning of the flesh had passed with Gimli, but it is one thing to live out one’s youth, come of age and see one  _ yén _ turn upon another, and not miss a desire one has never known – and quite another to discover yearning, lust and completion in the arms of another, then have it taken away.

It had took Legolas this long to come to understand the change wrought upon his father when his mother had sailed West.

When he opens the small box, there’s only the scent of cedarwood, resiny and slightly tart. There had been a time when he could smell the spiced oils his husband used to comb in his hair, but none of that lingers any more, the scent long lost to time.

Still, as Legolas cradles the small loose braid in the cup of his palms and draws breath, he knows how it would be: a blend of spice and musk with a tang of sweetness underneath. It is no longer than the span of his hand from heel to fingertips, his memento, deep rich red interwoven with sparkling white. His hands close on their own, for the small comfort of being able to  _ hold _ something.

There had been campfires, numerous past counting, and the flickering light would dance on the fierce curls of Gimli’s beard and hair, and the flame would set his dark eyes aglow as his deep voice rose to a song or turned to story-telling, his audience a band of fellow travelers or Legolas alone. It had made no difference either way, for there would always be that particular gaze that lingered overlong on him and made his skin tingle all over with impatient heat.

And Legolas still remembers how good it had felt to be wanted so.

There had been starlight, countless white-sparkling lanterns hanging from the velvety blue canopy over their sail, reflections shivering apart on the dark waters. By day, there had been the blinding brilliance of the sunlight on the waves, and Legolas remembers how the selfsame light had caught on Gimli’s white workman’s braid, and on the hair on his chest when he had gone shirtless as the waters grew warmer. How soft it had been under his touch, softer yet than it had been when red. ‘Snows have come to my mountain,’ Legolas had teased, his wandering fingers coming to rest over his husband’s heart, ‘it must be winter.’

‘But which winter?’ Gimli had quipped. ‘Surely not that of the White Mountains; too south for a proper snowfall, or even a winter of decent length. Maybe Ered Luin,’ he had mused, ‘there is snow aplenty– but no. It’s so mild as to be soggy, most years. But an  _ Erebor _ winter, now that you would like,’ he had grinned, crow’s feet fanning wide and deep at the corners of his eyes, ‘snow enough to drown in, and how it lasts– long and hard, the winters of Erebor. What I call a proper winter for a mountain.’

Legolas had agreed, laughing, and it had been right and proper for the two of them, a slow, familiar coming-together when the very stars above had turned strange.

The time itself turns different out in the West, but Legolas suspects that for any remaining kin of Gimli’s, both him and his husband have already passed into story and song. Become a legend, and not quite real. And for all that there’s a handful of people in Aman besides himself who remember Gimli from before they sailed, no other had known him like Legolas: both in his prime and in unbending old age, as a fine-spoken poet and a shrewd proud Lord, as a friend turned lover and husband. So he’s duty-bound to keep remembering, no matter how it pains him.

Because one truly passes from the world only when one’s deeds are forgotten.

Because one whose name is still spoken is not yet truly gone.

‘Gimli,’ Legolas says, and the name falls from his lips half-broken, a plea, a curse, a question forever unanswered. Then, whispered near soundless into the quiet solitude of their house, another name, one he first learned the day they were wed. And that is a vow, renewed countless times over, to be kept as long as Legolas has breath left to speak.

A rope to save him from drowning on those days that are unlike others. A word of Command to bind his breath to a body weary of waiting. A star to guide home his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> _yén = the great year of the Elves, 144 solar years._


End file.
